The station was filled with the stench of vodka, sweat, woollen scarves and aprons. Emotions grew in intensity as six o’clock approached, but with the increasing agitation the noise gradually subsided. All eyes kept turning in the direction from which the train was expected to approach. Everyone was waiting for Father Makarucha; he had promised to come and bless those who were going to war. The deaf-mute Wasyl Horoch wandered about the platform like anxiety incarnate until one of the soldiers seized him by the scruff of the neck and frog-marched him off. Horoch struggled with the soldier, pitifully protesting: “Mu-mu-mu…”
Around six o’clock, the whole of Topory and the whole of Czernielica had gathered on the platform. One had the impression that all the cows in the village would be turning up as well, and all the horses, all the sheep and the pigs, that the stream flowing through the middle of the village would come by, and that the sacred Hutsul rivers Prut and Czeremosz would break their banks to bless the men who had come to them to bathe and to water their horses and cattle.
The station was seething. Final words of advice, final exhortations and final curses flew back and forth in a heavy atmosphere of anxiety, fear and pain—muffling the pounding of the artillery. Nobody was thinking about the approaching Muscovites now; everyone’s thoughts were directed far beyond the sapphire evening horizon above which the reborn sun reclined, reconciled with earth and people. Everyone’s thoughts were drifting towards the unknown little Hungarian towns, where the sons of the Hutsul land were already being expected in the barrack yards by the dreaded sergeants with their threatening bushy moustaches. The heads of anonymous corporals, sergeants and captains kept emerging from nowhere, from out of the ground, sprouting from the gravel and from the railway tracks, popping out from behind telegraph poles. Not even obtaining a platform ticket, death wandered at will all around Topory-Czernielica station, breathing cold air down the collars of one man after another.
Six o’clock came and went, but there was no sign of the train. Those waiting to depart became really impatient. They would have preferred to be on their way, rather than endlessly prolonging the moment of parting. After the strange events of that day, the sun was setting like a splendid, perfectly round dish, and shortly mist and haze began to form above the rivers.
It was not until a few minutes to seven that a heavy rumbling sound was heard, accompanied by wheezing, and finally the clanking of iron moving at speed. Everyone held their breath. Silence fell on the platform and the silence was so profound that you could hear the telegraph tapping in the stationmaster’s office. A brief, hysterical whistle brutally pierced the silence. Preceded by clouds of white steam and black smoke, a long train made up entirely of goods wagons pulled into the station. It was hauled by an iron camel, the product of Floridsdorf locomotive works. The camel with a massive hump, the boiler, was sweating. Its iron skin was covered with long, winding veins of copper pipes. It passed the station building, coming to a halt far beyond the pump. All the ironwork was clanking. The locomotive’s buffers had struck the buffers of a coal wagon, and they passed the impact on until it reached the last wagon. All the chains clanged and the train reversed a step, like someone bumping into a wall in the dark. The pistons, the locomotive’s sinews, relaxed their tension. The camel relieved itself by letting off steam.
Although he was a railwayman, Piotr Niewiadomski felt as though he was seeing a train for the first time in his life. The wagons were already full of reserve militia who had boarded at previous stations.
The boarding of the train began. The great commotion resumed. Mothers and wives, sisters and fathers kissed and hugged the departing men. Everyone jostled each other, as if all of a sudden they were in a great hurry. The gendarmes and the soldiers had to chase away the old women crowding towards the wagon, using their rifle butts. Magda sobbed softly, not venturing to embrace her man in the presence of all these legitimate wives and mothers. She could not bring herself to express her illegitimate anguish. She wept in some impersonal way; her inward sobbing might just as well have been for all those departing men as for a particular man. Piotr shook her hand as if it was that of a man, once again giving instructions to take care of Bass. At the moment when he had fought his way through the crowds to reach the wagon, the incident with Bass occurred. Doing his damnedest to get into the wagon, the dog dug his teeth into Piotr’s tunic. Gendarme Corporal Jan Durek noticed this and separated the dog from the man, delivering a heavy kick with his hobnailed boot. Bass gave a pitiful whelp and sprang back, tearing off a piece of cloth. He clenched this relic saturated with Piotr’s scent firmly in his teeth. Piotr turned to the gendarme and, all red in the face, shook his fist in anger. But the gendarme did not notice. Before the dog was able to launch a renewed assault on the train, he had already been separated from his master by the boots, trousers, backs, bundles and boxes of strangers.
“Get in! Get in!”, shouted the soldiers and gendarmes. Everyone boarded. And when they were all aboard, the stationmaster gave the signal with his whistle, but, not sure that the driver had heard it among the great commotion, also raised his hand. Yet the train did not move. It refused to obey civil authority. It was standing on the track as though spellbound or as though waiting for someone else. Then the stationmaster shouted in a thundering voice: “Ready!” The call was echoed by the soldiers on duty at the station. This had the required effect. A military cap leant out from the footplate of the locomotive and immediately a hiss of steam was heard. A prolonged whistle sounded and the wagons juddered. The station fell silent. Even the dogs went quiet. The steam concentrated in the boiler was forced through the internal pipes into the cylinders and the pistons came to life. Puffs of heavy black smoke burst from the stack and slowly, slowly, like caravans leaving a house of mourning, the wagons began to move, pushing away, repelling, tearing away, literally tearing away the bodies of those who were going to war from those who remained in Topory.
At that moment, two old Jewish women gave a loud scream. In their withered wombs the juices stirred once more, reviving the pain that had seared them in childbirth like the scorching heat of the desert. Deadened by the passing years, it now flared up like embers below the ashes. This was the signal for universal weeping. The whole station caught fire from the Jewish flames, shaking and sobbing. The women yelled like tragic choir leaders, the Hutsul women yelped like bitches being whipped, toddlers whimpered, dogs, led by Bass, who had released from his teeth the scrap of cloth torn from his master, barked. The gendarmes beat them with rifle butts and chased the women away. Only the old men and women sobbed without shedding a tear. Not a sound came from their throats, not a single drop of moisture drove out the grief from their glazed, sunken eyes. They shivered and trembled like withered shrubs in the wind. Father Makarucha had not come.